Passionate about IP! Since June 2003 the IPKat weblog has covered copyright, patent, trade mark, info-tech and privacy/confidentiality issues from a mainly UK and European perspective. The team is David Brophy, Birgit Clark, Merpel, Jeremy Phillips, Eleonora Rosati, Darren Smyth, Annsley Merelle Ward and Neil J. Wilkof. You're welcome to read, post comments and participate in our community. You can email the Kats here

For the half-year to 30 June 2015, the IPKat's regular team is supplemented by contributions from guest bloggers Suleman Ali, Tom Ohta and Valentina Torelli.

Regular round-ups of the previous week's blogposts are kindly compiled by Alberto Bellan.

Monday, 16 March 2009

Last chance ... to register for CLT's conference this Thursday, IP in the Educational Sector, being held at Holborn Bars, London (details here).

Right: "Teachers' Pet", one of a selection of delightful posters from Allposters

An educational video on the much-discussed US Federal Circuit decision in re Bilski (see notes here and here)has been put together by Chicago law firm McCracken & Frank LLP. The IPKat would not like to be accused of being a plot-spoiler, but he can safely say that the show covers a review of the brief history of business method patents, an in-depth discussion of Bilski itself, post-Bilski developments (current to 17 February) and patent claim drafting strategies and tips that take Bilski into account. You can watch it here or get it from M&F as a DVD.

UK (or is that DigiBrit?) legal practitioners who still think that the Trade Descriptions Act 1968 is still part of the armoury of legal weapons for dealing with, among other things, counterfeit goods sold as though they were legitimate, had better take a reality check. You can start here with Filemot's post on SOLO IP if you've nowhere more convenient ...

The IPKat is not Wal-Mart's greatest admirer, but the Evil Empire's quality control people must be doing something right if others can paste upmarket labels on to Wal-Mart's cheapo clothing and get away with it. The IPKat thanks his old friend Miri Frankel for this precious insight into US enterprise in the face of recession.

Here's an advance notice for contributors to, and peer-reviewers for, Oxford University Press's monthly Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice. This autumn JIPLP is going to be processing all stages of the submission, review and correction process via ScholarOne's Manuscript Central system. The exact date on which the change-over takes place will be announced at the end of April. Once the new system is in operation, articles, current intelligence notes and book reviews may only be submitted via this system. You can be sure that it will be a real pain in the teething stages, for all of us, but the long-term advantages are immense. They include things like (i) articles not getting lost in the pipeline, (ii) peer reviewers getting automatic reminders that someone, somewhere wants to hear from them and (iii) a means by which authors of articles can find out online, at 2.30am on a Sunday morning, the exact stage reached in the processing of their article. You have been warned!

The IPKat's friend Gill Grassie cunningly directed the IPKat's attention to the TIPLO (The Intellectual Property Lawyers' Organisation) website, where a report of last month's House of Lords meeting can be found. The Kat thinks the whole thing was a ploy to get him to talk about TIPLO's lovely logo, using only three of the five Olympic Rings and with not a lightbulb cliche in sight.

Via R. S. Praveen Raj comes a link to this item in The Hindu concerning the registration of the image of a deity as a trade mark in India. The proprietor, the Attukal Bhagawathy Temple, maintains that its registration of a mark entitled ‘Sabarimala of Women’ would help to prevent unauthorised use of the image and the title. Praveen Raj, himself a former patent and designs examiner, has raised a number of issues relating to the sensitive interface between religious faith and commercial practice, which leads the IPKat to wonder what his readers think.

The January/February 2009 issue of the World Intellectual Property Reviewhas just reached the IPKat's desk. It contains several articles of interest, including an update by editor Edgar Forbes on the parlous state of programme format protection in the UK, as well as "Patent strategies in a green environment" by a three-man team from Sterne, Kessler, Goldstein & Fox.